RtlStringCbCatA function (ntstrsafe.h)

Article
10/21/2021

The RtlStringCbCatW and RtlStringCbCatA functions concatenate two byte-counted strings.

Syntax

NTSTRSAFEDDI RtlStringCbCatA(
  [in, out] NTSTRSAFE_PSTR  pszDest,
  [in]      size_t          cbDest,
  [in]      NTSTRSAFE_PCSTR pszSrc
);

Parameters

[in, out] pszDest

A pointer to a buffer which, on input, contains a null-terminated string to which pszSrc will be concatenated. On output, this is the destination buffer that contains the entire resultant string. The string at pszSrc is added to the end of the string at pszDest and terminated with a null character.

[in] cbDest

The size of the destination buffer, in bytes. The destination buffer must be large enough to include the concatenated strings and the terminating null character.

For Unicode strings, the maximum number of bytes is NTSTRSAFE_MAX_CCH * sizeof(WCHAR).

For ANSI strings, the maximum number of bytes is NTSTRSAFE_MAX_CCH * sizeof(char).

[in] pszSrc

A pointer to a null-terminated string. This string will be concatenated to the end of the string that is contained in the buffer at pszDest.

Return value

The function returns one of the NTSTATUS values that are listed in the following table. For information about how to test NTSTATUS values, see Using NTSTATUS Values.

Return code	Description
STATUS_SUCCESS	This success status means source data was present, the strings were concatenated without truncation, and the resultant destination buffer is null-terminated.
STATUS_BUFFER_OVERFLOW	This warning status means the concatenation operation did not complete due to insufficient buffer space. The destination buffer contains a truncated, null-terminated version of the intended result.
STATUS_INVALID_PARAMETER	This error status means the function received an invalid input parameter. For more information, see the following paragraph. The STATUS_INVALID_PARAMETER return value means that one of the following occurred: The value in cbDest is larger than the maximum buffer size. The destination buffer was already full. A NULL pointer was present. The destination buffer length was zero, but a nonzero length source string was present.

Return code

Description

STATUS_SUCCESS

This success status means source data was present, the strings were concatenated without truncation, and the resultant destination buffer is null-terminated.

STATUS_BUFFER_OVERFLOW

This warning status means the concatenation operation did not complete due to insufficient buffer space. The destination buffer contains a truncated, null-terminated version of the intended result.

STATUS_INVALID_PARAMETER

This error status means the function received an invalid input parameter. For more information, see the following paragraph.

The STATUS_INVALID_PARAMETER return value means that one of the following occurred:

The value in cbDest is larger than the maximum buffer size.
The destination buffer was already full.
A NULL pointer was present.
The destination buffer length was zero, but a nonzero length source string was present.

Remarks

RtlStringCbCatW and RtlStringCbCatA should be used instead of the following functions:

strcat
wcscat

Because RtlStringCbCatW and RtlStringCbCatA receive the size of the destination buffer as input, they will not write past the end of the buffer.

Use RtlStringCbCatW to handle Unicode strings and RtlStringCbCatA to handle ANSI strings. The form to use is determined by your data as shown in the following table.

String data type	String literal	Function
WCHAR	L"string"	RtlStringCbCatW
char	"string"	RtlStringCbCatA

If pszSrc and pszDest point to strings that overlap, the behavior of the functions is undefined.

Neither pszSrc nor pszDest can be NULL. If you need to handle NULL string pointer values, use RtlStringCbCatNEx.

For more information about the safe string functions, see Using Safe String Functions.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Available in Windows XP with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and later versions of Windows.
Target Platform	Desktop
Header	ntstrsafe.h (include Ntstrsafe.h)
Library	Ntstrsafe.lib
IRQL	Any if strings being manipulated are always resident in memory, otherwise PASSIVE_LEVEL